Henry George and Leo Tolstoy
By Beatrice Collison

Last month’s feature on the book Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age, by Edward T. O’Donnell, emphasized the similarities between contemporary America and that of the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th century, an era marked by rapid progress at the same time as crippling poverty. In 1879, Henry George’s bestselling book Progress and Poverty called out this inequality as unjust, and went on to propose a solution. As 21st century America continues to face many of the same problems as the “Gilded Age,” some scholars and biographers find themselves looking back to Progress and Poverty and to its author for lessons, or even answers. As O’Donnell urges us to reexamine George, perhaps it is fitting to consider other great thinkers of that era, who dealt with persisting questions about inequality, individualism, and laissez-faire government, to name a few. Besides George, there are many American names of that age that come to mind, from Mark Twain (who coined the term “gilded age”) to John D. Rockefeller. As we were reminded earlier this month during a visit to Russia to promote our new series of Russian translations, another, somewhat unexpected name comes up in conjunction with George; this would be Leo Tolstoy, who owned a portrait of George. He also happened to be one of George’s most devoted supporters and admirers—and the admiration was mutual.

It is not too difficult to see some basic similarities in both men’s lives and experiences that may have contributed to this reciprocal fondness. Though they lived through the “Gilded Age” in different countries—George in the US, and Tolstoy in Russia—both George and Tolstoy were highly attuned to similar forms of social and economic inequality in their respective societies; the same hypocrisy appeared to them, though different events. George lived through some of the United States’ greatest feats of the century (the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, the completion of the Atlantic Cable, and the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, for instance), but also saw the extreme poverty that lay just beneath the surface, a poverty that the privileged attempted to justify by arguments ranging from religious to scientific (social Darwinism comes to mind). Tolstoy lived through similar times of inequality, including many years of political, economic, and social unrest in Russia. He was alive when serfdom was still legal, as well as when it was outlawed—though many of the same injustices persisted even after the emancipation of serfs in 1861. Tolstoy in fact writes about George’s political philosophy in relation to the politics and immorality of serfdom. Clearly, he believed that Russia experienced many similar problems to the US, and that George’s philosophy could be useful not just to Americans. (more…)

What value does the story of Henry George, a self-taught economist from the late nineteenth century, hold for Americans living in the early 21st century? Quite a lot, if we stop to consider the ways in which contemporary American society has come to resemble America in the late-nineteenth century, a period popularly known as the Gilded Age. As in our times, that era was marked by a dramatic increase in income inequality. It also witnessed a sharp and disturbing rise in the numbers of Americans living in poverty, even as Wall Street boomed and overall productivity soared. The Gilded Age was also marked by a surge in the size and power—and political influence—of large corporations and banks. And the politics of late-nineteenth century American society were characterized by extreme partisanship and paralysis. Indeed, the parallels between then and now are so striking that many contemporary progressive reformers, activists, and commentators have taken to referring to the era in which we now live as the Second Gilded Age.

If we are indeed living in a Second Gilded Age, then we can gain important insights into potential solutions to our economic, social, and political problems by taking a close look at the first Gilded Age. In particular, it is instructive to examine the people who emerged in this period to demand reforms—many of which were enacted in the subsequent Progressive Era. Henry George was one of these figures and he gained an enormous following among a wide cross section of American society.

George was a little-known journalist living in California in the 1870s when, moved by the aforementioned troubling trends of the Gilded Age, he began to study economics and history with an eye toward writing a book. The result of this effort was a book published in 1879 titled Progress and Poverty. The book is still in print and available in many languages. As its title suggests, George focused on a vexing question: why amidst so much material and technological progress was poverty increasing? This was, George warned, “the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed.”

The book became a best seller and launched George as one of the era’s best-known and most influential reformers. The solution George proposed—a “single-tax” on land values—appealed to some of his followers. But far more were drawn to and inspired by the broad claims he made regarding American’s republican heritage and values. And here we see where George speaks to the concerns of our age.

Friday, April 10th, 2015

“The best way to move forward is in a three-way partnership, where government sets clear and forceful policies, business creates and invests in products and services to help clean up the environmental mess and civil society acts as an arbiter to see that governments and businesses do what they say.” — Mark L. Clifford

This week our featured book is The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, by Mark L. Clifford. Throughout the week, we will be featuring content about the book and its author on our blog as well as on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page. Today, in the final day of the week’s feature, we are happy to present an excerpt from an article written by Mark Clifford in The World Financial Review in which he discusses how “[t]he challenge of improving Asia’s environment has been translated into business opportunities.”

The Greening of Asia: Businesses’ Role in the World’s Biggest-Ever Environmental Clean-Up
Mark L. Clifford

The East is Black. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom of anyone who has seen pictures of Beijing’s shrouded skies, India’s fetid rivers and the steel mills and cement kilns which blanket much of the countryside with a pall of smog.

Sadly, this dystopian image of Asia’s environmental misery is all too accurate. In China alone, 1.2 million people a year die prematurely from air pollution. Skies in some Indian cities are even dirtier. Large parts of the region are in danger of running out of clean water. Clusters of cancer villages testify to the human cost of fast economic development.

If this sounds like an environmental nightmare, it is. Asia is home to 4.3 billion people, six out of every ten people in the world, as well as to some of the fastest-growing economies. What’s been good for economic growth has come at a high cost for the environment.

Asia’s strategy seemed to be summed up as “get dirty, get rich, get clean.” (more…)

Wednesday, April 8th, 2015

“Just as Asia’s developed economies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore adjusted to higher wages by improving productivity and relying on better education and more innovation, so Asia will find a way to profitably do more with less in an era of resource constraints.” — Mark Clifford

This week our featured book is The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, by Mark L. Clifford. Throughout the week, we will be featuring content about the book and its author on our blog as well as on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page. In Mark Clifford’s conclusion, excerpted below, he gives a quick overview of how various countries, cities, and businesses in Asia are responding to environmental challenges, and argues that “Asia will find a way to profitably do more with less in an era of resource constraints.”

Tuesday, April 7th, 2015

“Asia is approaching a moment of systemic—in some cases, existential—crisis. How Asian countries react to the environmental challenges of pollution, resource shortages, and climate change will determine whether the region will continue along its unmatched path of growth or descend into an increasingly unlivable dystopia.” — Mark L. Clifford

This week our featured book is The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, by Mark L. Clifford. Throughout the week, we will be featuring content about the book and its author on our blog as well as on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page. Today, we are happy to feature part of an excerpt from the book that originally appeared on the Asian Review of Books: “Green Shoots Under Soot-Stained Skies.”

Green Shoots Under Soot-Stained Skies
Mark L. Clifford

Beijing’s air is “crazy bad,” according to the U.S. Embassy: choking pollution regularly smothers the capital, reducing visibility to near zero, grounding planes, snarling traffic, and forcing city dwellers to don protective face masks while outside. A widely used air quality index, which in the United States rarely goes above 100 and exceeds 300 only during forest fires and other extreme events, approached the 1,000 level in Beijing in early 2013.

The effect, says a Chinese researcher, is to blot out the sun as effectively as a nuclear winter. Office workers in the capital’s skyscrapers cannot see the streets below, as a bitter, blinding pall settles over a city that hosted the 2008 “Green Olympics.” Beijingers call it “air-pocalypse” or “air-mageddon,” and they have become increasingly vocal about their frustration. “I especially want to know if the party secretary or the mayor are in Beijing these days,” a senior editor at People’s Daily wrote on his blog during record smog in January 2013. “If so, how do they guarantee they can breathe safely in Beijing?” (more…)

Monday, April 6th, 2015

“In this well-researched and ultimately optimistic account, Clifford makes the case that environmental policies ‘can and must be fixed’ and gives us examples of companies that have worked to find private-sector solutions. In doing so, Clifford sheds much-needed light on the workings and future of the region’s efforts on the environment, and on the need for governments to set clear rules so that business can do its part to solve the region’s environmental crisis.” — Joseph E. Stiglitz

We are also offering a FREE copy of The Greening of Asia. To enter our book giveaway, simply fill out the form below with your name and preferred mailing address. We will randomly select our winners on Friday, April 10th at 1:00 pm. Good luck, and spread the word!

Friday, March 20th, 2015

This week our featured book is Genealogy of American Finance, by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla, with a foreword from Charles M. Royce. Today, for the final day of the feature, we’ve excerpted a sample chapter focused on one of the Big 50: Morgan Stanley.

Thursday, March 19th, 2015

This week our featured book is Genealogy of American Finance, by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla. Today, we are happy to present Charles M. Royce’s foreword to Wright and Sylla’s book, in which Royce focuses on the importance of the Museum of American Finance both in the process of creating the Genealogy and in a broader cultural context.

Foreword
By Charles M. Royce, CEO, The Royce Funds

I was introduced to the leadership of the Museum of American Finance through my friend and television personality, Consuelo Mack, who serves on the Museum’s Board of Trustees. During the course of my initial conversation with President David Cowen, I brought up an idea I have had for years, which is to trace the genealogies — or family trees — of the major American financial firms. I have been working in finance for more than 50 years and have witnessed first-hand many dramatic changes in the industry. So many firms that existed when I first began investing are no longer around.

Given that my firm looks for “value” in companies when we invest, I asked David if there was value in this idea. His response was that, indeed, this would be an invaluable research tool. This book is the first output of that discussion.

As the only independent finance museum in the nation, the Museum often fields calls from researchers inquiring about what happened to certain firms or banks — now defunct or acquired. Many times those questions have been difficult to answer. Moreover, the two main regulatory bodies, The Federal Reserve and the FDIC, do not have complete information and are, therefore, also unable to also answer those questions. According to the Museum’s exhibit team, an area of the “Banking in America” exhibit featuring an abridged genealogy of the Bank of America was the single largest piece of research that went into any section of the Museum’s permanent exhibits. This is largely because more than one hundred years’ worth of merger and acquisition data is so difficult to come by.

My conversations with David and the Museum team resulted in my commitment to underwrite a massive research project to compile these family trees and house them in a central location. It has taken well over a year of research — which included hundreds of hours of archival legwork — to compile these genealogies and make them publicly available.

I applaud Professors Wright and Sylla for their research and writing efforts, which have made this project a reality. As a Columbia University MBA, I am pleased to note that my alma mater has enthusiastically embraced this idea as well, and that this beautiful book has been produced by Columbia Business School Publishing.

Now, if the Museum receives a research inquiry about past financial firms, the staff is able to answer where that firm’s history fits into the modern financial landscape. Or, better yet, people can access the information themselves via this book or the Museum’s website.

This project sheds tremendous light into the dynamic nature of our nation’s financial history. One can never completely understand the future without a comprehension of the past. In an easy-to-read and understandable manner, this book gives a narrative history that is accessible to all — from the newcomer working at a bank to the finance professional, from the student to the scholar, from the practitioner to the regulator.

Please enjoy the book, as each chapter will transport you back in time to see the birth and growth of these 50 financial institutions.

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

This week our featured book is Genealogy of American Finance, by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla, with a foreword from Charles M. Royce. Today, we’ve excerpted “Overview of the Big 50,” a set of infographics provided by Wright and Sylla that give context for their discussion of the Big 50 Banks.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2015

“To fully comprehend the history or genealogy of any bank or BHC, a general knowledge of US banking and business organizational history is required.” — Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla

This week our featured book is Genealogy of American Finance, by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla, with a foreword from Charles M. Royce. Today, we are happy to present an excerpt from the book’s introduction, “A Brief History of Banking in the United States.”

Monday, March 16th, 2015

“Genealogy of American Finance is a treasure trove of information on American banking and its history, in an unusual — and unusually useful — format.” — John Steele Gordon

This week our featured book is Genealogy of American Finance, by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla, with a foreword from Charles M. Royce. Throughout the week, we will be featuring content about the book and its author on our blog as well as on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page.

We are also offering a FREE copy of Genealogy of American Finance. To enter our book giveaway, simply fill out the form below with your name and preferred mailing address. We will randomly select our winners on Friday, March 20th at 1:00 pm. Good luck, and spread the word!

Friday, March 6th, 2015

In the University Lecture (see below) delivered at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs, author of The Age of Sustainable Development, discusses sustainable development as an emerging scholarly discipline and as an urgent policy imperative, and describes the evolving role of universities and other social institutions in addressing these complex challenges:

Monday, March 2nd, 2015

In addition to featuring the book and the author on the blog, we will also be posting about the book on twitter, and facebook.

We are also offering a FREE copy of The Age of Sustainable Development to one winner. To enter the contest please e-mail pl2164@columbia.edu and include your name and address. The winner will be selected Friday, March 6th at 1:00 pm.

“The Age of Sustainable Development is my candidate for most important book in current circulation. Inspirational, encyclopedic in coverage, moving smoothly from discipline to discipline as though composed by multiple experts, Sachs explains why humanity must attain sustainability as its highest priority—and he outlines the best ways to do it.”—Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

Wednesday, January 28th, 2015

“The experience of previous years leads to one conclusion: there is one morality in politics and another for economy. In the years since 1989, the morality of the economy has fully prevailed over the ethics of politics and democracy.” — Alexis Tsipras

Alexis Tsipras was just sworn in as Prime Minister of Greece, after his Syriza party and the Independent Greeks party came to an agreement resulting in a coalition government. The focus of Tsipras’s campaign was his pledge to oppose the austerity program imposed on Greece by European creditors. In “The Destruction of Greece as a Model for All of Europe: Is This the Future That Europe Deserves?,” his foreword to Slavoj Žižek and Srecko Horvat’s What Does Europe Want? which we have excerpted below, Tsipras explains his stance against austerity and looks to alternative visions of the future to provide hope for Greek citizens.

Question: What is your book about?

Eric Barthalon: Uncertainty, Expectations and Financial Instability is about what we call “expectations” and the pro-cyclical responses they trigger. I argue that, under uncertainty, we infer the future largely from our experience of the past, and I show how Allais’s lost theory of psychological time gives an operational and testable content to this intuition or hypothesis.

Q: What exactly do you mean by uncertainty?

EB: When we throw four dices repeatedly, we cannot tell the outcome of each throw, but experience as well as mathematics tell us very precisely what we should expect: there will not be many instances where the sum of the four dices is either 4 or 24; most of the throws will yield a result close to 14. This is a situation of “known unknowns” or risk, in which it would be insane to expect a throw to yield either a 2 or a 30, and—even if the first throws are not close to 14—it would be equally insane not to expect the average of the throws to converge toward 14. In such risky situations, our expectations should be identical to the model’s forecasts. This is the very definition of rational expectations. (more…)

It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely a function of the pace at which they close that gap.

Thus, to understand how countries grow and develop, it is essential to know how they learn and become more productive and what government can do to promote learning. In Creating a Learning Society, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald cast light on the significance of this insight for economic theory and policy. Taking as a starting point Kenneth J. Arrow’s 1962 paper “Learning by Doing,” they explain why the production of knowledge differs from that of other goods and why market economies alone typically do not produce and transmit knowledge efficiently. Closing knowledge gaps and helping laggards learn are central to growth and development. But creating a learning society is equally crucial if we are to sustain improved living standards in advanced countries.

Friday, September 5th, 2014

“We know the banks are eager to put the scandal of the financial crisis behind them. What’s disturbing is that, in the name of deference, convenience, or something darker, the Justice Department is letting them do just that.”—Dean Starkman

In a sense, he argues that the financial press abandoned its roots in investigative journalism and let mortgage lenders, banks, and Wall Street off the hook. Recently, in the New Republic, Starkman suggests that the government is doing the same after the fact. Despite some settlements paid out by the likes of J.P. Morgan and Citigroup, the Justice Department “has permitted the banks, for a price, to bury their sins.” Starkman writes:

It bears saying one more time: It’s a disgrace that the Justice Department has failed to bring a single criminal charge against any Wall Street or mortgage executive of consequence for their roles in wrecking the economy, despite having managed to make arrests in the comparatively piddling schemes of Enron and the Savings & Loan flimflam. (The latter resulted in more than 800 convictions, including those of many top executives.) These settlements are wan consolation. The sums being surrendered, for starters, are large only until compared with the $13 trillion or so the public lost in the financial crash—or, for that matter, with the banks’ own coffers. (Citi’s pure profit in the two years before the wipeout was more than triple its penalty.) Not to mention that the money won’t be paid by any parties actually responsible, but by the banks’ current shareholders, who pretty much had nothing to do with the misdeeds in question. And the bulk of the settlements will be tax deductible. For destroying trillions in wealth and thousands of jobs, banks will get a write-off.